There was a microsecond’s pause.

“Tennalhin Halkana: confirm, please?”

Tennal gave Zin a baffled look. “Sure. Absolutely.” Why not? She clearly had something up her sleeve.

Zin swallowed. “I invoke the right to active audience.”

From the Convocation on Orshan Central, there was only a faint confusion, but this meant something to the Resolution. One by one, every single coin-sized white eye opened and turned into a circular light-screen. Each floating screen showed a Resolution staffer with a swirling face-field covering their eyes. Zin’s demand had clearly taken some of them by surprise: a few showed glimpses of their eyes as they hastily turned on their masks.

Zin faced them. Only Tennal could see her fingers nervously twisting together at her side. “This whole incident is based on a treaty violation,” she said. “Orshan got permission for the neuromods, as long as they don’t travel. We never told you about the syncs.”

“Syncs?” the Resolution staffer said.

They didn’t know about the syncs? Tennal was astonished for all of two seconds, then he saw his aunt pinching the bridge of her nose, and astonishment changed into a growing dark glee. Get them, Zin.

“The Orshan army conscripts strong readers,” Zin explained. “They bind them to architects in a way we call a sync. It allows the architect to control the reader. The readers are supposed to be convicted criminals, but that’s not true for all of them. A strong architect-reader team makes a good piloting unit. I submit that under our treaty and amendments, all forced military syncs are illegal, and Orshan has been systematically hiding this from the Resolution.”

How long had Zin been sitting on this? Tennal glanced back at Zin’s law shoal, where the senior lawyer was nodding, unsurprised. Zin had had help. Of course she had. It’s a reader rights group, she’d said before he left, weeks ago. Tennal hadn’t paid enough attention.

Nobody on the Orshan side was trying to gainsay Zin—possibly knowing it would look worse—though Zin had instantaneously blown all her goodwill with the divisions and possibly most of the planet. Tennal had forgotten that their core family trait was a willingness to break things to get what they wanted. And Zin had decided that what she wanted was to stop the syncs.

If the law shoal was involved, they must at least have judged that the Resolution wouldn’t annul Orshan’s treaty over this. Being outside the Resolution was unthinkable; the Resolution wouldn’t do that lightly. But they could make trouble.

“This changes things,” one of the people on the light-screens said. Interestingly, it was a different one from the staffer who had been doing all the talking up to this point. “They’ll need an irregular audit.”